Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)
MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN (1994) Contributed by Zach Meyer and Garrett Jeter This motion picture version, which is largely faithful to the original novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, follows the famous story of Victor Frankenstein as he follows his passion and ambition to overcome the finality of death with the reanimation of a creature composed of harvested body parts and later must confront the creature's murderous vengeance upon him and his loved ones. Frankenstein stars Kenneth Branagh, also the director, as Victor and Robert DeNiro as the creature. Plot The ship of explorer Robert Walton, on a scientific expedition to the North Pole in 1794, is trapped in ice. The crew wishes to turn back and even threatens mutiny, but Walton refuses, even if the venture costs lives. After hearing a series of unearthly howls, the crew meets Victor Frankenstein, who unsuccessfully tries to enlist their help to hunt down the creature that emits the howls. Frankenstein then relates his tragic tale to Walton. In a flashback, we learn that the scholarly Victor, from a prominent and affluent family in Geneva, Switzerland, gains a foster-sister, Elizabeth, and that his mother dies in a difficult childbirth. Sorrowed by his mother's death, Victor determines to conquer death and begins experiments in electricity. Victor attends the University of Ingolstadt and encounters two professors who impact his life, Professors Krempe and Waldman. He spars with Krempe over the finality of death. Waldman, in particular, intrigues Victor because he has conducted experiments in the application of electricity to dead tissue. During a public innoculation campaign, Waldman is mortally wounded by a patient that refuses vaccination. Victor is unable to save him, but procures the dead professor's notes on reanimation and determines that Waldman lacked necessary elements to succeed. Ingolstadt experiences a cholera plague, and Victor uses the epidemic to harvest parts for his creature, including both parts from Waldman's murderer and the brain of Waldman. He stays in town despite its closure and despite the efforts of Clerval and even a visit from Elizabeth to convince him to leave. Victor completes his creation and the creature escapes the laboratory. A mob beats him and drives him off. After wandering the countryside, the creature finds a family of cottagers and secrets himself in a shed adjoining the cottage, eavesdropping on their activities and secretly providing them with food. During his hiding, he learns language and discovers Victor's journal, the latter providing him with information about his creator. Later, he protects the family from an abusive landlord. However, as he visits the blind Delacey in cottage, the young Felix drives him off and removes the family from the area. The angry creature torches the empty cottage. The creature travels to Geneva, eventually killing Victor's little brother William after seeing his creator's face on a locket that Victor had given to Elizabeth. A house-servant, Justine Moritz, returns from a search for William and suffers the blame for William's death, and an angry, vengeful town mob breaks into the jail and lynches her. The creature confronts Victor and tells him that they will meet on the Sea of Ice. There, creator and creature meet for the first time, and the creature asks Victor's help in creating for him a friend and companion that is like him, vowing to live with the companion in an uninhabited part of the globe but also vowing revenge and murder if Victor refuses his wish. Victor agrees to help and almost loses Elizabeth becauses he requests a delay in their wedding-date; she agrees to marry him if he will disclose his secret to her. The creature exhumes Justine's body for the reanimation. If Victor refuses help, the creature says that he will be with Victor on his wedding-night. Ignorant of the death of Victor's father's death, Victor and Elizabeth marry and proceed on their honeymoon with an armed escort, but the creature kills Elizabeth. Over Clerval's moral objections and emotionally distraught at his wife's death, Victor uses the head of Elizabeth and the body of Justine for a reanimated creature-woman. The creature comes to claim the creature for his mate, and while creator and creature compete over her, she immolates herself and, with her, the Frankenstein home. Returning to the present, we find Victor relating how he has tracked the creature ever north to kill it. Victor dies, and Walton and crew find the creature mourning over its dead creator. During a funeral for Victor, with the creature present, a warming wind has broken the ice and freed the icebound ship. Refusing an invitation by Walton to come with them, the creature immolates himself and Victor's corpse. Walton decides to end the expedition and turn back to England. ANALYSIS (Jeter) 'AGENCY AND PRESENCE OF CHARACTERS AND THEMES' In studying the film adaptation of a novel, one can consider the amount of “agency,” “privilege,” or “presence” that the film-maker, as opposed to the author, affords to various characters and themes. By “agency” we signify the ability, even more, the power and potency, to act upon the narrative and other characters. A film-maker may endow a character or theme with more or less ability to impact the direction of a plot and/or the actions of others. Agency arises partly through presence or “screen time”; a script can thus provide more or less presence of a motif or a figure that invests these things with the power to influence narrative, privileging some over others. While Shelley’s novel focuses on the world from the perspective of Victor Frankenstein, Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 adaptation of Frankenstein shifts screen presence and narrative agency exclusively from Victor to other characters, including the creature, in order to create a more human drama. Branagh himself found the novel intriguing as subject because it was "just a great big discussion about what it means to be a human being" (Greene 12). Under Branagh’s direction, the self-absorbed, solipsistic Victor of the novel seems to become more integrated with both environment and people . 'THE CREATURE, CLERVAL, ELIZABETH, AND WALDMAN: GREATER INFLUENCE ON THE NARRATIVE' The novel’s creature is largely invisible to all but Victor, and even what agency it has can be subject to debate. We have only the creature’s word concerning the murder of William, and the murderer of Clerval is never established, only assumed. We do not actually see the murder of Elizabeth, but assume that it is the creature. All of these accounts come through the chief narrative agency of Victor, not the creature. The film changes these representations to allow us to witness Elizabeth’s murder and with stronger action through the forcible removal of her heart. William’s murder changes from the creature’s mere attempt to silence the boy to the film creature’s account of how he deliberately lifted the boy and crushed his neck. Branagh’s only removal of agency is the survival of Clerval. In its encounters with Victor, we see a more interactive creature. The original Victor meets the creature by chance on The Sea of Ice, but the film permits the monster to issue an invitation, indeed, a near-demand, that they meet there, actively forcing an interaction. Moreover, the creature exercises conscience with an active injection of morality into the meeting using a pointed question as to whether Victor thought about the consequences of his actions. In a move intended to intertwine characters’ lives more heavily than Shelley would, Branagh even invests the creature with an influence on the creation process that the novel lacks; not only does it provide the “raw materials” for Victor’s needs, but it also exercises its will in the right to choose its own mate. That will progresses to outright competition with the creator's will as the creature asserts a claim to property vis-a-vis Victor's: "Branagh's film markedly deviates from the letter, if not arguably from the spirit of the novel, by making the Monster and Frankenstein open rivals in love" (Frost 88). Several other characters earn more celluloid presence, and thus agency and its concomitant impact on narrative. Murdered in the novel, Clerval wins survival and exercises his participation in several ways, particularly as a dramatic counterpoint device that highlights for the viewer the philosophical debate that Victor’s thoughts generate. While the novel never permits others to enter into Victor’s discourse about reanimation and its moral implications, keeping it a secret from all, Branagh’s Clerval is consistently permitted to participate in these discussions with Victor and to assert an opposing opinion. In fact, he is privy to what Victor is doing. In addition to “discourse agency,” Clerval receives “moral agency,” several times electing not to participate in the creation processes. His moral high-ground comes as a rejoinder to Victor’s belief that he has nothing left to lose by reanimating Elizabeth: “Nothing but your soul.” The novel’s Dr. Waldman serves a minor device for the introduction of a scientific perspective and for Victor’s inspiration. Shelley provides him as a contrast to the hard-science, empirical Krempe. Branagh provides Waldman (John Cleese) with a substantial and pronounced presence and the great amount of narrative presence and agency that the doctor lacks in the novel. Originally, Waldman was a harmless professor of medicine, but in the film he exercises more scientific vigor; he has run afoul of the law for “illegal experiments” and according to Clerval would breach heaven and “lecture God on science.” Cleese’s Waldman usurps the originality not only of scientific experimentation in reanimation from the novel’s Victor, but actually goes further, exercising the superior potency of inspiring Victor where Shelley initially rested the spark of thought in Victor. Victor assumes a subordinate position, as he wants to “help” Waldman. Waldman’s influence continues even after death, as his brain, the seat of intellect and will, the core of agency, directs the creature; Victor looks to his beloved professor’s corpse as the guiding light of his scientific endeavors. Even the original Krempe, who merely lectures, without debate, the young Victor on the credibility of alchemy transforms under Branagh to an active participant in a metaphysical debate over life and death, himself receiving more of the “philosophical agency” that threads the film. MORE TO FOLLOW WORKS CITED Frost, R.J. ""It's Alive!" Frankenstein: the Film, the Feminist Novel and Science Fiction." Foundation 67 (1996): 75-94. Print. Greene, Ray. "Perfectly Frank." Box office 130 (1994): 12-14. Print. FURTHER READINGS Frost, R.J. ""It's Alive!" Frankenstein: the Film, the Feminist Novel and Science Fiction." Foundation 67 (1996): 75-94. Print.